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I personally think that if the ACW didn't/couldn't change a man's outlook and perspective than there was something wrong with the man.
We all rewrite our own histories of our lives. If he didn't believe in emancipation earlier than he rewrote his own history to believe that he did. Doesn't bother me one bit.
My question was not meant to bother you concerning what Lee's views were on slavery before, during or after the war.
It is simply a matter of record of how the man felt at different times during his life and during and after the war.
It has always been amazing to me how many people supported the institution of slavery before and during the war, but AFTER, the war was about anything but slavery.
Talk about the war changing one's views!
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Back in the 1830s, Lee favored emancipation when the Virginia Emancipation Convention met (same year as Nat Turner -- Lee was at Fortress Monroe at the time). He was surprised when the convention voted against that (74-58). He expressed confidence that it would pass the next time it came up -- but it never did.
Regards,
Tim
Tim,
Do you have the source for this handy? Did he express this in a letter or was it something recounted after the war?
Lee had slaves with him when he was at Fort Monroe [Emory M. Thomas, _Robert E. Lee: A Biography,_ p. 68] and he didn't favor emancipation of those slaves.
In 1849, Lee was in Baltimore, MD and expressed concern that the slaves he brought with him might be lost. As he wrote to Mary, "the abolitionists are very active here & opportunities great [for flight]. That is the experience of all that have brought their servants here." [R. E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, 25 Sep 1849] Lee made sure he brought the slaves back with him when he returned to Virginia. [Michael Fellman, _The Making of Robert E. Lee,_ p. 64] So he doesn't appear to have favored the emancipation of those slaves then, either.
I just meant that I didn't see anything strange about his ever changing POV. Lee's feelings on the subject were evolving and maturing, life's experience just makes that a reality for all of us.
I don't know why he felt so strongly about the abolitionists, but he did capture John Brown at Harper's Ferry, as a Federal Soldier. Could be that first experience with abolitionists caused him to hold rancor against them while conceding (in his maturity) that their ideas were morally right.
Do you have the source for this handy? Did he express this in a letter or was it something recounted after the war?
Hmm, yes, somewhere. I don't have the text of a complete letter, but off the top of my head I saw it many years ago in a book called "The Generals" by Nancy Scott Anderson and Dwight Anderson. That is a dual Lee/Grant biography, an interesting but not great work. That book did refer to the Lee letter after the convention and quote from it, IIRR, and was footnoted.
The convention took place in the year of the Nat Turner Rebellion -- Lee was at Fortress Monroe at the time and the commander there sent troops from the garrison to suppress the rebellion. (George Thomas was a young boy in the county where the bloody rebellion was going on.)
When the Convention convened, there were 58 delegates committed to emancipation, 60 committed to the defeat of emancipation, and 14 undecideds. All the undecideds ended up voting against emancipation. In his letter, Lee expressed disappointment, and a belief that emancipation would pass the next time.
Not knowing the details of the proposal, I assume they were talking about a long and gradual emancipation, a la NY-PA-NJ.
I might still have that book somewhere. If I turn it up, I'll give you more detail
Quote:
Originally Posted by cash
Lee had slaves with him when he was at Fort Monroe [Emory M. Thomas, _Robert E. Lee: A Biography,_ p. 68] and he didn't favor emancipation of those slaves.
People are often different in their opinion of what society should do and what they themselves should do. Many people who drive gaz-guzzlers favor environmental causes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cash
In 1849, Lee was in Baltimore, MD and expressed concern that the slaves he brought with him might be lost. As he wrote to Mary, "the abolitionists are very active here & opportunities great [for flight]. That is the experience of all that have brought their servants here." [R. E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, 25 Sep 1849] Lee made sure he brought the slaves back with him when he returned to Virginia. [Michael Fellman, _The Making of Robert E. Lee,_ p. 64] So he doesn't appear to have favored the emancipation of those slaves then, either.
Again, his feelings seem to have been for an orderly, long-term solution by the state. That doesn't mean he favored a major immediate sacrifice or the loss of his "property" through his own action. No one has called him a rabid Abolitionist, only someone who was for emancipation "someday".
Hmm, yes, somewhere. I don't have the text of a complete letter, but off the top of my head I saw it many years ago in a book called "The Generals" by Nancy Scott Anderson and Dwight Anderson. That is a dual Lee/Grant biography, an interesting but not great work. That book did refer to the Lee letter after the convention and quote from it, IIRR, and was footnoted.
Tim,
I believe I found the source of the claim. It's from the same postwar conversation in which Lee had claimed to have always favored emancipation.
In November of 1865, Lee had a conversation with a British visitor, Mr. Herbert C. Saunders. Eight months after the conversation, on 31 Jul 1866, Saunders wrote to Lee asking permission to publish the conversation, which Lee refused. Saunders' account was published by Lee's son, Robert E. Lee, Jr., in his book, _The Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee:_
"On the subject of slavery, he assured me that he had always been in favour of the emancipation of the negroes, and that in Virginia the feeling had been strongly inclining in the same direction, till the ill-judged enthusiasm (amounting to rancour) of the abolitionists in the North had turned the Southern tide of feeling in the other direction. In Virginia, about thirty years ago, an ordinance for the emancipation of the slaves had been rejected by only a small majority, and every one fully expected at the next convention it would have been carried, but for the above cause. He went on to say that there was scarcely a Virginian now who was not glad that the subject had been definitely settled, though nearly all regretted that they had not been wise enough to do it themselves the first year of the war. Allusion was made by him to a conversation he had with a distinguished countryman of mine. He had been visiting a large slave plantation (Shirley) on the James River. The Englishman had told him that the working population were better cared for there than in any country he had ever visited, but that he must never expect an approval of the institution of slavery by England, or aid from her in any cause in which that question was involved. Taking these facts and the well-known antipathy of the mass of the English to the institution into consideration, he said he had never expected help from England. The people 'at the South' (as the expression is), in the main, though scarcely unanimously, seem to hold much the same language as General Lee with reference to our neutrality, and to be much less bitter than Northerners generally—who, I must confess, in my own opinion, have much less cause to complain of our interpretation of the laws of neutrality than the South. I may mention here, by way of parenthesis, that I was, on two separate occasions (once in Washington and once in Lexington), told that there were many people in the country who wished that General Washington had never lived and that they were still subjects of Queen Victoria; but I should certainly say as a rule the Americans are much too well satisfied with themselves for this feeling to be at all common." [Robert E. Lee, Jr., _The Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee,_ pp. 231-232]
And even though he refused permission to publish [Ibid., p. 227], Lee had made several corrections to Saunders' manuscript. [Ibid., p. 226]
So the source isn't a contemporaneous letter, but rather R. E. Lee after the war, no earlier than November of 1865, and possibly as late as August of 1866. In my opinion, this weighs a bit against the claim.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
People are often different in their opinion of what society should do and what they themselves should do. Many people who drive gaz-guzzlers favor environmental causes.
Actions speak louder than words. Lee may have claimed he favored emancipation, but his actions didn't fit those claims.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
Again, his feelings seem to have been for an orderly, long-term solution by the state. That doesn't mean he favored a major immediate sacrifice or the loss of his "property" through his own action. No one has called him a rabid Abolitionist, only someone who was for emancipation "someday".
Long-term, of course, meaning long after he had shuffled off this mortal coil. When it came right down to it, though, Lee didn't favor emancipation at any time he could possibly actually see it in practice.
I believe I found the source of the claim. It's from the same postwar conversation in which Lee had claimed to have always favored emancipation.
In November of 1865, Lee had a conversation with a British visitor, Mr. Herbert C. Saunders. Eight months after the conversation, on 31 Jul 1866, Saunders wrote to Lee asking permission to publish the conversation, which Lee refused. Saunders' account was published by Lee's son, Robert E. Lee, Jr., in his book, _The Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee:_[
...
No, I checked, and that does not appear to be correct. The Anderson and Anderson book footnotes that paragraph to a number of sources. Some of them are the expected post-war historical societies' publications, but it also references 1831 letters between the two Mary Lees. It does not reference the son's collection of letters. Clearly not based solely on that 1865 reference, if it refers to that at all.
Lee's emancipation attitude in this is a common one, frequently seen in Southerners of the day. It was a strong aspect of Southern evangelism in the pre-Civil War period, and a major reason for the split of major religious groups (i.e., this is how we got "Southern Baptists", "Southern Methodists", etc. in the decades before the Civil War). I don't agree with the belief, but there is substantial reason to say that many Southerners sincerely believed it (or said they did). Robert E. Lee simply seems to have been one of them, and my guess is that he was sincere enough in his belief. At the same time, I also feel the "white man's burden" argument for slavery is very self-serving for the slaveholders.
OTOH, one of the main reasons for the attitude of Southern women about emancipation seems to have been the behavior of some of their menfolk down in the slave quarters. The Custis women (Lee's wife and mother-in-law) were very strong on this. Mr. Custis seems to have been one of those given to visiting the slave quarters. It is perhaps not surprising that these Southern women favored freeing the slaves by colonizing them back to Africa.
The slight evidence we have is that Lee would have ben willing to go along if Virginia -- or Southern society as a whole -- decided on some sort of gradual emancipation policy. Since he appears to have favored it in 1831, we have to see him as more "liberal" on this issue than most Southerners. But "liberal" in that sense does not put him anywhere near a Massachusetts Abolitionist or John Brown.
This isn't an easy issue. U. S. Grant's family knew the John Brown family when he was growing up; Grant's father was a strong anti-slavery man. Yet Grant married the daughter of a slaveowner, who held slaves herself, and owned a slave himself for a short period of time. People living in the midst of all this faced daily conflicts and compromises of principle.
No, I checked, and that does not appear to be correct. The Anderson and Anderson book footnotes that paragraph to a number of sources. Some of them are the expected post-war historical societies' publications, but it also references 1831 letters between the two Mary Lees. It does not reference the son's collection of letters. Clearly not based solely on that 1865 reference, if it refers to that at all.
I suspect those historical society publications use the Saunders manuscript as their source. Without the Mary Lee letters we can't tell if they bear on it or not. They could simply recount the results of the assembly debates as far as we know.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
Lee's emancipation attitude in this is a common one, frequently seen in Southerners of the day. It was a strong aspect of Southern evangelism in the pre-Civil War period, and a major reason for the split of major religious groups (i.e., this is how we got "Southern Baptists", "Southern Methodists", etc. in the decades before the Civil War).
Huh? We got "Southern Baptists" and "Southern Methodists" because the "Southern" part favored slavery and opposed emancipation. I'd say the attitude Lee professed to have in the postwar account was a rather uncommon one in the 1840s and 1850s.
I will agree, though, that the attitude expressed by Lee in his 1856 letter that slavery would end one day in the distant future was one that was expressed by other upper class Virginians. I simply find it disingenuous on his and their part.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
I don't agree with the belief, but there is substantial reason to say that many Southerners sincerely believed it (or said they did). Robert E. Lee simply seems to have been one of them, and my guess is that he was sincere enough in his belief.
His actions, as well as most of his contemporaneous letters dealing with the subject, contradict such sincerity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
At the same time, I also feel the "white man's burden" argument for slavery is very self-serving for the slaveholders.
Yes. They claimed blacks were unfit for freedom due to their "not being civilized," due to their lack of education, and due to their lack of economic means. Of course, they didn't mention the fact that the institution of slavery kept blacks uneducated, kept blacks from having economic means, and was itself an uncivilized, brutal treatment of a people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
OTOH, one of the main reasons for the attitude of Southern women about emancipation seems to have been the behavior of some of their menfolk down in the slave quarters. The Custis women (Lee's wife and mother-in-law) were very strong on this. Mr. Custis seems to have been one of those given to visiting the slave quarters. It is perhaps not surprising that these Southern women favored freeing the slaves by colonizing them back to Africa.
That sounds reasonable to me. I have a couple of studies of plantation women on my shelf waiting to be read. Perhaps I'll have a gander at them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
The slight evidence we have is that Lee would have ben willing to go along if Virginia -- or Southern society as a whole -- decided on some sort of gradual emancipation policy.
Nobody claimed he was not a law-abiding man. I don't see this as evidence he was antislavery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
Since he appears to have favored it in 1831, we have to see him as more "liberal" on this issue than most Southerners.
Well, the jury's still out on that one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
This isn't an easy issue. U. S. Grant's family knew the John Brown family when he was growing up; Grant's father was a strong anti-slavery man. Yet Grant married the daughter of a slaveowner, who held slaves herself, and owned a slave himself for a short period of time.
It doesn't change your point, but in actuality there's no evidence Julia held slaves herself. The best evidence we have now indicates Col. Dent retained ownership of the slaves and Julia had the use of four slaves. Like I said, it doesn't affect your point, though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
People living in the midst of all this faced daily conflicts and compromises of principle.
Regards,
Tim
Grant, though, never claimed he had "always" wanted emancipation, and Grant was never said to have been always antislavery. Grant himself said he had no hobby with the slaves either way. But he also said that in the war he saw the end of slavery, and later in the war he came to realize that slavery had to be destroyed in order for there to be a lasting peace. Grant's record on slavery, though, is far better than Lee's.
don't agree with the belief, but there is substantial reason to say that many Southerners sincerely believed it (or said they did). Robert E. Lee simply seems to have been one of them, and my guess is that he was sincere enough in his belief.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cash
Huh? We got "Southern Baptists" and "Southern Methodists" because the "Southern" part favored slavery and opposed emancipation. I'd say the attitude Lee professed to have in the postwar account was a rather uncommon one in the 1840s and 1850s.
I will agree, though, that the attitude expressed by Lee in his 1856 letter that slavery would end one day in the distant future was one that was expressed by other upper class Virginians. I simply find it disingenuous on his and their part.
His actions, as well as most of his contemporaneous letters dealing with the subject, contradict such sincerity.
Yes. They claimed blacks were unfit for freedom due to their "not being civilized," due to their lack of education, and due to their lack of economic means. Of course, they didn't mention the fact that the institution of slavery kept blacks uneducated, kept blacks from having economic means, and was itself an uncivilized, brutal treatment of a people.
Actually, Robert E. Lee's religious position on slavery looks about average for an Upper South Protestant, particularly an Episcopalian, in the 2 decades or so before the Civil War. Those people tended to feel that slavery should not really be confronted and discussed within their religion/church, but rather in civil life.
Down in the Deep South, members of the same denominations were more than willing to discuss slavery within the framework of their religion (on average) and saw deep evangelical purpose in it (further supporting the "white man's burden" position). Not too surprising when you note the proportions of slaves to whites in those states and the importance of slavery to the local economy.
I don't agree with or like those positions. I do note that Robert E. Lee shows every sign of acting just like a great many other Southerners who professed the same belief and attitude. I have not seen any reason to feel he was insincere in what he said.
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